Plugged In

New Call of Duty accused of plagiarizing old Call of Duty

For years, grumpy gamers have complained that Activision’s meganormous Call of Duty franchise lacks innovation. This time, they may have a point.

An eagle-eyed gamer noticed that a cut-scene during the first level in the newly released Call of Duty: Ghosts bore a striking resemblance to the ending sequence from 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, featuring different characters slapped over identical animations. So he captured the two and stuck them side by side. The results are, well, yeah. See for yourself:

Though the environments differ -- in Modern Warfare 2 a character is being dragged to a helicopter, while in Ghosts it's a truck -- it's pretty clear that the motion-captured animations are recycled.

But before you storm the gates of developer Infinity Ward, it’s entirely possible that the remake was an intentional decision, a way to pay homage to a key moment in the game that really served as the inspiration for Ghosts (the controllable dog Riley, for instance, is named after Modern Warfare 2’s Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley). It’s unlikely that a developer as detail-oriented and accomplished as Infinity Ward was just being lazy here.

Regardless, the anti-Call of Duty crusaders have their claws out, repeatedly calling it a "cut and paste" job in the video's comments (among other, less printable things).

Either way, the hubbub is unlikely to affect Ghosts' sales, which analysts (and anyone with a functioning cortex) expect will be very, very high. Whether or not Ghosts will plagiarize the sales of last year's Black Ops II is anyone's guess, however.